Fluid Animation from Simulation on Tetrahedral Meshes

Bryan Eric Feldman

This thesis presents a simulation method for creating animations of gases and liquids that enhances the adaptability over current simulators within the computer graphics community. The method achieves adaptability in element size and shape by discretizing the domain with tetrahedra rather than regular hexahedra, the standard element shape in computer graphics. I also describe a method which allows the discretization to adapt arbitrarily from time step to time step without computational or numerical smoothing penalty. Additionally, I demonstrate a method to augment the fluid simulator with a rigid body simulator such that the fluid and rigid body simultaneously effect one another. Together these capabilities allow for complex scenarios to be simulated with a high level of detail while maintaining practical computation time, memory use, and ease of implementation.

Advisor: James O'Brien

BibTeX citation:

@phdthesis{Feldman:EECS-2007-153,
Author = {Feldman, Bryan Eric},
Title = {Fluid Animation from Simulation on Tetrahedral Meshes},
School = {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
Year = {2007},
Month = {Dec},
URL = {http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-153.html},
Number = {UCB/EECS-2007-153},
Abstract = {This thesis presents a simulation method for creating animations of
gases and liquids that enhances the adaptability over current
simulators within the computer graphics community. The method
achieves adaptability in element size and shape by discretizing the
domain with tetrahedra rather than regular hexahedra, the
standard element shape in computer graphics. I also describe
a method which allows the discretization to adapt
arbitrarily from time step to time step without computational or
numerical smoothing penalty. Additionally, I demonstrate a method to
augment the fluid simulator with a rigid body simulator such that
the fluid and rigid body simultaneously effect one another. Together
these capabilities allow for complex scenarios to be simulated with
a high level of detail while maintaining practical computation time,
memory use, and ease of implementation.}
}